24
Studies have shown that spending time in the outdoors can improve your mental health. As outdoor education professionals, we have all experienced that call to explore the outdoors, but there may be a more concrete reason that we are “called to the wild.” Participating in outdoor activities is a form of exercise, and it’s well known that exercise can reduce anxiety, depression, and anger. Exercise can also increase revitalization, positive engagement, and tranquility. When reviewing trip assessments and the overall student experience at George Washington University (GW), we saw an opportunity to provide a mental health resource through our outdoor program, called TRAiLS.
GW is an urban campus in downtown Washington, D.C. The city can be a frustrating, scary living experience for first-year students. Our program noticed that students were having a hard time with anxiety, so we decided to partner with our mental health services to promote healthy living.
We looked at one study that measured the impact of walking in an urban environment compared with walking in an outdoor environment. Results showed that walking in an outdoor environment allows people to feel less pressure on deadlines and projects involving time. From this study, we inferred that students could benefit from TRAiLS trips by walking in the outdoors to help reduce their stress levels. Through our own assessment, we found that close to 90 percent of TRAiLS participants feel healthier and happier in the outdoors.
Our first step in developing a partnership with GW’s mental health center was finding allies who already supported our program. TRAiLS hosts about three to five trips every weekend, as well as an outdoor orientation in our pre-semester program, called Ad-venture Bound. These trips rely on rented vehicles, and university policy requires drivers to be 21 and over, so we use professional staff members from through-out the university who volunteer to drive. Through this volunteer program, we connected with a counselor in our mental health program who is passionate about the outdoors. She became a great ally, and we started talking about how we could collaborate.
Next, we brought counselors on our trips and changed the way we trained our student guides. Our counselor ally advocated for the counselors to tell students about TRAiLS trips as a mental health resource and to spread awareness about our trips. During our health center’s
Making your outdoor program a
By Lin Philpott
mental health resource